


Hold On

by clawstoagunfight



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Dream Link, Dreams and Nightmares, M/M, Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 19:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clawstoagunfight/pseuds/clawstoagunfight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is only okay when he’s asleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold On

**Author's Note:**

> Un beta'd, so all of the mistakes are mine.
> 
> It should be said that this is the product of one too many migraines and the worst insomnia of my life.

Stiles is only okay when he’s asleep; when his always tired lids are closed and he’s anywhere else but here, anyone else but this. He’s only okay when his eyelashes rest on his cheeks and the pale skin over his eyes blocks out the light. He welcomes the dark; when he can sink into the depth of non-dreams and open his arms to the void space inside of his mind. It’s the only time the thoughts stop; the only time he can turn off the pain and the hurt and just _let it go_ enough that it ends and he can finally have some semblance of listless calm. Even if it’s fleeting, even if it isn’t real, he craves sleep like a drug—because when he sleeps, he can’t _feel._ He’s numb, untouched by the constant pain of loss that clings to him like a second skin and wraps around him during his waking hours. In his sleep, he is untouchable. He’s free to sink into the endless emptiness inside of his own head and turn off everything—turn off the tears and the loneliness and the guilt and the fear—and just stop pretending to be okay.

He doesn’t always dream. Most times his dreams elude him like fleeting snippets of half-formed memories, half-remembered thoughts that are forever on the tip of his tongue, slowly driving him insane. Pockets of moments—of _him_ —of his face, his eyes, his angry words—slipping through the fingers of his mind like so many grains of sand; floating away into the stagnant vacuum that sucks the life from every cell of his body, bleeding everything inside of him dry. When he wakes the next day and everything is blank—when everything is just as dark when he’s awake, and he knows that he might never dream again—it devastates him, kills something inside of him and he wishes he is strong enough to just sink back into that overwhelming darkness inside of his own head and let the crushing weight of the nothingness tear him apart—break him and keep him until he can never wake up, never have to feel anything else ever again. Until he can be just another figment, another floating image that is lost, that can never be touched or seen and he can finally stop living and breathing and aching for something that he can never know.

The nights that he dreams, though; those are so much worse. They are worse and better and devastatingly tragic all at once. They are everything Stiles craves, and everything he loathes. Dreams are his biggest hopes, and his greatest fears. In his dreams, he sees _him_ , sees _Derek_. He sees him like he is really there, like he is _real_. He doesn’t just see him, though; he _feels_ him. He feels the ghosts of his fingertips as they reach out for him, the sound of his voice as he mumbles unintelligible words into his ear—desperate and angry—pushing at Stiles’ thoughts so hard that it steals the air from his lungs, but he doesn’t understand them, doesn’t understand anything that comes from Derek’s lips in his sleep-heavy head. It makes the phantasm inside of his mind shift until it is corroding around them and falling to pieces that he’ll never be able to put back together and he knows that this is it. This is all he has of Derek—this existence within a dream; transitory, evanescent, hollow; devoid of the life that he should’ve been living, trapped in the cage of his skull. This is all that lingers, just these few dreams that always feel more like nightmares to him when he wakes. These are the worst; these are the things that break his heart anew every time he wakes up and forgets—even for just a moment—that Derek isn’t real—not anymore.

The dreams—however much he’s growing to hate them—are a lifeline. They are the only things that remind him that Derek used to be there, because the ghosts of his actions are repeated in his dreams. In his dreams, he almost has him again—even if they are just moments, back in the burnt out shell of Derek’s house, adrift in a reality that doesn’t exist—they are _his._ They are a link; something to hold onto when he’s awake and the pain and loss threaten to overtake him. It’s a thread, weaved into the fabric of his core that pulls and tugs and tangles inside of him, that ties around his heart like some sort of noose. It’s all he has. It’s everything. Sometimes the dreams are the only things that keep him going. He wakes up in the morning just so that he can go to sleep the next night, hoping—praying—for a dream to surface, waiting for the phantom image to appear, to say something—anything—but the words are incoherent and incomprehensible, and he’s left waiting for reassurance that he isn’t crazy, that Derek was _real_ , that he used to be more than just a figment of Stiles’ imagination.

There are times when Stiles really isn’t sure. Is Derek real? Has he ever been? It’s been so long that he is starting to feel like nothing more than an actual dream. No one else talks about him; they act like he never existed, like he is some ghost that lives inside of Stiles’ head. In the beginning, when Stiles first started to talk about Derek, when the dreams started, the way his father looked at him was enough to tell him that they thought he was crazy. It wasn’t enough that Stiles had to deal with losing Derek, but to deal with the fact that he was wiped completely from the world, as if he had never existed. But he did—still does. His absence leaves a hole, a hollow place inside of Stiles that will never heal, will never be patched up or filled. It’s empty, just like Stiles’ life without him.

He goes about his life, forcing himself to keep living, if only for Derek—if only for the figment of a memory that he’s become. The days are long—never-ending spans of time that drag at him, pull him taut like a vicious rubber band, the sting leaving almost visceral marks when it finally snaps, when the day finally ends and he rests his head against his pillow, praying for dreams. The endless days fade, color into weeks, into another month, into a world where time somehow seems to pass without him. And it’s wrong; all of it; it’s so wrong. But Stiles can do nothing other than let the days swallow him, eat at him, shell him out, make room inside of him for something else—anything else—but this terrible ache that settles in every nerve, that thrums through his blood when he is away from his bed, away from even just the faint possibility of seeing Derek in a dream.

It’s a slow torture; like parts of his mind are slowly being pulled from his head, the pressure always there, always constant in the back of his skull, pulling, like the memories can force themselves out of his brain. Sometimes the pain is so sharp that it blinds him—steals his breath—the agony inside of his own mind growing into something suffocating. He doesn’t know when the headaches first started, thinks it might’ve been around the same time that the dreams did, but it’s a fleeting thought, erased by the building pressure in his skull.

Every morning, he makes himself get out of bed, and he thinks that maybe that’s the hardest thing—the getting up, the moving on, the pretending that he’s okay when he talks to his father. Conversations between them are trivial at best, tense and stiff for the most part, leaving Stiles always just a little on edge, a little uncomfortable in his own skin, in his own house. He doesn’t talk about Derek anymore, doesn’t tell anyone about the dreams or the headaches or the crushing emptiness he feels when he isn’t asleep. He thinks his father knows, thinks he can see it when he looks at him—a look like he doesn’t even know who Stiles is anymore, like he doesn’t recognize who this shell of a person is, like he’s scared that Stiles is on the brink of madness, like he is watching Stiles drift away just like he watched his wife drift away. It kills another part of him, when he catches those looks, and he knows that he can’t stay here, doesn’t belong here.

The headaches never truly seem to dissipate. They grow worse and worse after every dream, like his mind is trying to tell him that thoughts of Derek are ruining him, killing him, destroying his brain and his body. On those days, he goes to the only place he can think, the only place where the weight of loss and loneliness is less crushing, less of a burden; the only place where he can fully breathe. He goes to the place where the Hale house used to be. He remembers the first time he dragged himself out here—on a hunch, on a whim—after the first dream, after he remembered with painstaking clarity who Derek was—and the house was gone. The land was lush and green and full of trees and living and vitality, like the house had never existed, like everything was just a dream, just a figment; some illusion or fabricated notion of Stiles’ thought. But he knows the house was real, just like he knows Derek was real. He _knows_. He _remembers_.

He remembers hunting half-bodies in the woods with Scott, remembers being hunted in turn, remembers werewolves and alphas and kanimas and dead bodies and paralytics and hallucinogens and _fear_ and _guilt_ and tortures. He remembers all of it. Remembers things that shouldn’t be possible, that don’t make any sense.

Scott isn’t a werewolf anymore, just like the Hale house isn’t here anymore. He asked him once, maybe a month after the dreams started. He asked; saw the look that crossed his friend’s face—the same look his father sometimes gives him now, like he is crazy, like he is _insane_. He never asked again after that, never asked if he remembered Derek or Isaac or Boyd or Erica. He already asked about Allison, and Scott didn’t know who he was talking about.

It scared him at first—maybe a part of him is still scared by it—by the not knowing, by the dual memories that co-exist simultaneously—like he is living two lives. The before and the after. The life he had before, with werewolves and Derek, and the life he has now—if he could even call this shell a life. He’s safe here, of course; safe from all of the nightmares that he knows exist, safe from the panic and the fear and the death. But it’s empty. Everything here is empty, too shallow, too bright, too _right_ that it feels wrong.

He never thought he would miss Derek, not like this. Never thought he would miss a life of destruction, of danger and bereavement and guilt and panic and clawing aches of sorrow. He never thought he would miss Scott either, or his father, but he knows that these ones here aren’t really them, not the ‘them’ they should be. The irony is that he feels closer to dream Derek than he does to either of the people that are still here and alive in this world, and he doesn’t even think Derek is still real.

 _This world_. Because it can’t possibly be the same world—not when everything is so different, so off kilter, so undeniably flawed and erroneous that sometimes Stiles welcomes the headaches and the nightmares just to remind him of what’s _real_ ; just to remind him what it’s like to glimpse at something valid when the world around him is smotheringly sanguine.

So he goes to where the Hale house used to be. He goes to the overgrown lot, so full of life that his heart clenches, and just sits down by the biggest tree. It’s his tree, has been since the first time he came here. It is dying, trunk jagged and limbs twisted into painful knots. No leaves grow. It tarnishes the perfection of the landscape, just like Stiles mars the perfection of this world he’s been thrust into. They are one in the same; two pieces that don’t fit, that show the falsity around them, that show something deeper than the shallow surface of the world at their disposal.

He sits under the twisted trunk, inhaling in the sunny-warm scent of the woods around him, listening to the flutter of birds and the buzz of insects, soaking in the white noise, and he breathes for what feels like the first time since he opened his eyes this morning. He doesn’t know how long he stays there, isn’t aware of time or how it passes or fades until it’s suddenly cooler and the sun is on the other side of the tree. Still, he doesn’t move. He shifts until he is lying against the trunk, staring up at the twisting branches, trailing his eyes over the crooked paths they weave, in and out of each other, coiling around and over and under until Stiles loses himself in the maze and he feels his eyelids start to drift closed.

The world fades, darkens; the color drains and he feels himself start to wade into the black, like walking through a river of numbness. His limbs are heavy, leaden, aching, but he pushes forward. He knows where he’s going—is familiar enough with the darkness by now to know the way—and he heads toward the half-standing decrepit remains of the house. It’s charred, smoke-weary front door beckons and he walks up the creaking steps. He can’t see the steps past the inky blackness that swirls by his knees, but he can feel them under his soled shoes. He steps on the weak spot of the porch and feels it give a little beneath his foot, just like it always used to do. The door opens, barely, when he walks up to it, like a gesture or a summon of intent, and he presses on, wallowing into the darksome hole, what little light there was from the wilting starlight all but eclipsed when the door closes behind him. He knows where to go, just like he does every time—in every dream—and makes his way into a room that he’s never actually been in before; before _this_ , before _here_. There is a fire blazing in the fireplace, the smoke not quite managing to filter up through the ruined chimney, and it seeps into the room, thickening the air, making Stiles’ lungs ache.

But then he sees him—or the outline of him—through the smoke and he makes to rush over, but the inky black around his legs keeps him immobile, hardening into something solid, turning to iron and chains that pull at him and anchor him to the spot. Derek doesn’t move either. Stiles wouldn’t even know it was him if not for the fact that it always is. He hears a sound past the sickening solidification of the inky substance. It’s his voice. It’s always his voice. He can hear him, but he can’t understand him, doesn’t know the words that he says.

He sees him then, stepping closer—he sees his face for a moment—one solitary second of familiarity and they lock eyes. Derek moves all at once, stepping closer, trudging through the concretion around them. The smoke is getting thicker, the fire blazing hotter, brighter, and it makes Stiles shiver, even in his dream-state. He knows what fire can do, even if it is only in his head, he knows its power and destruction. Derek is almost to him now, and he reaches out, like he always does, but the darkness around him tightens its hold and he screams, feeling it cut into his flesh, feeling it creep up from his knees, slowly encasing him.

Derek must feel it too, because he pales and he shudders, the sound of the blaze louder now, drowning out whatever words Derek is trying to say to him. He doesn’t hear them—can’t—not past the fire and the smoke and the inky black that is working its way over his waist, filling the room, filling the house. But it doesn’t stop now like it normally does. Normally Stiles would wake up, would awake to the chill of sweat cooling on his skin and blink up at the white ceiling. Instead, the darkness climbs, like it’s alive. For a moment he can almost feel tiny claws dig in to his skin, feel the blood start to trickle out, but it’s climbing higher, higher, until it is around his neck. He can’t move, but he struggles anyway, only to feel the concretion constrict around his throat, cutting off what little air the fire and the smoke haven’t managed to consume yet.

And then he hears it—for the first time, he understands the words—even as the darkness swallows him, even as his body writhes in pain so intense that it blinds him, even as he feels his lungs start to burn with the strain of too little oxygen, even as the pressure in his head seems to explode into a kind of torture that makes him wish for a moment that he could let the darkness swallow him if it meant he didn’t have to feel this ever again. But then Derek’s hand moves through the blackness around them and he feels the warm rasp of his fingers settle over his own still-outstretched ones. It’s warm and solid and _real_ in a way that nothing has been in so long, that the pain lessens into a smarting throb, and he feels his head clear, if only for a second, if only for just one stilly moment.

“Hold on.”

The darkness breaks with a sickening thud, a crunch, a splinter; a pull so fierce it’s like he is being ripped from the murky depths of the dream, and he gasps for breath—trying desperately to fill his aching lungs with oxygen. He hears something—a scream—so ragged it feels like it’s clawing up his spine, like it’s eating away at his insides, plucking at his eyes so it can work its way into his head—and the scream gets closer, louder, until his lips press together and it stops.

The wooden shelter around them is crumbling, ashing everywhere, over everything, as it disintegrates into the black, into the flame, into the night. The ceiling collapses and Derek’s hand wraps more securely around his. The starlight starts to filter in at the same time that the fire starts to build and burn faster, brighter, hotter, higher; destroying what is left of the darkness wrapping itself around them, liquefying it once more, until the inky black loosens its hold and Stiles is finally— _finally_ —being pulled from the devastated dwelling.

He runs in what way he can, with the still bleeding cuts and bruises and aches the darkness has left behind on his skin. He follows Derek as he weaves through the woods, running from the house, running from the fire and the shadows and the night itself. They run until Stiles can no longer smell smoke, until the raging fire is long behind them, barely more than candle light in the distance. Stiles stops; he has to stop.

He isn’t even aware that he said that out loud or that he isn’t moving anymore until Derek’s hand drops from his own and his head feels like it is splitting in two—the livid pain like a hammer inside of his skull. He cries out and drops down to the underbrush, cradling his head like he could cradle his broken mind itself, but the pain doesn’t lessen, doesn’t change its hold on him and he hears the scream again—like someone dying has used their last breath to haunt the night with their anguished yell.

It isn’t until Derek tentatively touches his neck that the scream stops. He realizes that it was him—his cry—and he shivers, reaches out for Derek’s hand and places it on his forehead, where the pain is worst. He feels better with Derek touching him. Just like last time, it’s like his head clears with the feel of his skin and he lets his eyes close, if only for a moment. Derek doesn’t say anything, just shuffles so that he is kneeling in front of Stiles, his hand still perched on his head.

The pain seems to all but disappear the longer they stay like that, until Derek cautiously removes his hand, pulling it away in small increments, as if testing the stability of whatever connection it is that takes the agony away, until his hand is gone. The pain grows, but it’s less this time; manageable, and he sits down, moving himself so that his back presses against the tree trunk behind him. He looks up at Derek, takes him in, takes in the ash that covers his clothing, the soot that’s smeared across half of his face, the way his eyes are trained on Stiles. They look—stare— _see­_ —for so long that Stiles wonders if either of them will ever speak again.

Derek is _here_ ; he’s _real_ , just like Stiles knew he was. He’s right in front of him, kneeling down, staring back with the same eyes, the same gaze, that he remembers from before—albeit a little less angry. He’s the same Derek, so he surprises Stiles when he settles Indian style on the underbrush and opens his mouth to speak. “I didn’t think you’d ever hear me.” Stiles almost doesn’t catch the words, almost doesn’t hear them because of how quiet they sound after the near-deafening noise that was inside of the house.

Stiles wipes at a bit of blood that is trickling from a cut on his arm, “I couldn’t understand, before.” He shakes his head, as if to clear it, as if to dislodge the million thoughts rattling and spinning around in his mind, “It never made any sense.”

Derek is looking at him like he doesn’t know what to make of anything, like he doesn’t know what to say, or how to put what he’s thinking into words. It’s a look Stiles knows, has known for a long time, but it’s rarely directed at him. “What changed?”

Stiles thinks it over. What did change? Why was this time different? He closes his eyes and lets his taciturn reflection work through his busy mind, sift through his heavy thoughts, work through his memories. “I fell asleep out here—in the woods, I mean. By where the house used to be,” he looks away from Derek, eyebrows drawing together as his eyes sweep back toward where he can still see the smoke from the flames burning away at the house, “by where it is?” he shakes his head again, the thoughts making his head start to throb minutely. “I fell asleep by a tree.”

Stiles looks back to Derek when he hears him shuffle a little closer, until he is sitting next to Stiles, back against the tree. They both stare into the distance, settling into the silence of the night.  Neither of them say anything for a long while until Derek speaks again, “What were you doing out here?”

Stiles looks over at him—a quick look, like it’s the stupidest question he could ask—because it is. “I was looking for you.” He looks away when Derek’s eyes flicker to his, “This is the only place that felt real to me. The only place I could think anymore.” He mumbles the last, not even sure why he felt the need to say it, or why he feels the need for Derek’s approval. Derek isn’t even his friend, not really. He isn’t anything to him, as much as Stiles wishes he were. Derek is just the only thing tethering him to his own head, to his own reality—it’s as simple as that. Derek is the only thing that he couldn’t accept as missing from his life. He never let himself really think about it—about why he was okay without the rest of them—Erica, Boyd, Isaac, Allison, even Scott and his father—and why Derek’s loss was the only one he couldn’t stand—can’t stand; the only one that makes his heart hurt, made it hurt even from the start. Derek is a life line; the only connection to his real life in the too-right false world. It doesn’t even make sense, really, why Derek would be the one to show up in his dreams, to be the only one able to bring him back. Stiles couldn’t lose Derek, but that doesn’t explain why Derek is the one showing up in his dreams. It doesn’t make sense at all.

“I was looking for you, too.” The words are quiet, like some sort of silent assertion—like some confession—and it confuses him, captivates him, and he is looking back at Derek. They’re closer now, shoulders touching, and Stiles’ slowly building headache ceases.

Stiles tilts his head, “why?”

Derek looks away, turns back so he is looking in the direction of his burning home; his home, burning down for the second time. He knows even without hearing it, seeing it, that this time there will be nothing left. There’s no way anything could survive the darkness and the fire both eating away at it. “I couldn’t let them take you.”

Derek still isn’t looking at him, even as Stiles’ eyes travel over his stoic features. “But why?” Stiles doesn’t need to know who ‘they’ are. He knows it’s the alpha pack; knows without needing to be told that they somehow orchestrated this. He doesn’t know how—and he can’t really be bothered to care—not right now, not when Derek is looking back at him and actually _looking_ at him, as if he’s really seeing Stiles. “Why would they choose me?”

He lets out a long, shallow sigh. “They thought it would hurt me.” Stiles blinks slowly at that, not quite what he was expecting, but Derek continues before he can even think of anything to say, “I don’t—I don’t think they knew that we’d be able to connect. Not—like this, anyway.” He motions in the direction of the house. “Not with the dreams and all.”

 _Dreams_. A thought hits Stiles like a ton of bricks; hits him so hard that he loses his breath, feels his heart start to beat faster in his chest. It takes him a few tries before his mouth seems to want to work the right way, “Are we…Derek, are we still dreaming?”

Derek looks at him, looks at him for a long, long time. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. Stiles knows; he knew before he even asked the question. He swallows hard and looks down at the blood drying on his arms. “Which world will I wake up in? The real one or the fake one?”

Derek sits up a little straighter and presses his head back against the bark of the tree, looking up at the starry sky for a moment before his eyes flit back to Stiles’ again, “I don’t know, Stiles. I wish I could tell you, but I don’t know.”

He nods, in a daze—head fuzzy, body slowly starting to numb, limbs heavy like they aren’t really connected to his body. He almost feels catatonic. He almost feels like he’s gone back to floating in the endless vacuum that occupies his head, like he’s drifting in a fog, letting it start to carry him away—from the tree at his back and Derek at his side; away from the smoke and the flames and the ash and the darkness and the inky black that tried to crush him. He feels better, and it scares him. He doesn’t want to leave; not now; not after he’s spent days, weeks, _months_ , just trying so hard to get to right here, to right now. It isn’t fair—that he should finally find Derek, only to have him cruelly ripped from his world once again. “I think I’m waking up,” the words are barely a whisper—small, soft, barely the outline of the words to ghost into the air.

He sounds scared, he knows, but Derek just leans in a little closer, pressing his shoulder more securely against his own. “I promise, I’ll find you—even if I have to wait here every day for another two months, I’ll find a way to bring you back.” He whispers the promises and Stiles closes his eyes, finally giving in to the catatonia, giving into the immobilization of the dark, the pull of the ever-present blackness dragging him back under, back into the inky shade. He feels the ghost of Derek’s fingers twining with his own. “I won’t let them take you.” Derek’s thumb strokes over his knuckles—soft, like a feather or the kiss of the breeze—and he lets himself go, lets himself believe, trust, that Derek will somehow find a way to save him. Because, even if he never sees him again, he’ll have this; he’ll know that Derek is _real_ —that he’s somewhere out there searching and waiting for him.

“Hold on, Stiles.” Derek is still talking to him, whispering the words, the warmth of his skin feeling like flames licking at him where their shoulders are touching, where their fingers are laced together. He’s still whispering, even as the darkness takes hold and he loses all sense of time, or his body, or space, or feeling, or thought—until everything drifts away, turning transitory and fleeting, like a dream itself—until nothing is left but the vacuum of black drinking him down to carry him off into the strange, into the light, into the morning.

He’s still sleeping; he’s still okay, for a little while longer. Until he hears Derek’s voice one more time, like a shadow, like a far off echo of something that used to be—like something that could somehow transcend time and space and reality itself, “Hold on.”

But he doesn’t—he can’t. The light is calling to him; it’s touching his cheek and warming his cold, cold skin, beckoning him to the world of the living. He goes willingly—he’s so sick of the dark; sick of the pain and the heaviness and the loneliness—so he opens his eyes.

The light has a face—has a name and a body and a hand that is pressing against his cheek. He blinks up, stupidly, before he covers the hand on his face with his own. Derek leans down, leans over where Stiles is propped against the trunk of the twisted tree, but it is back where it belongs, with the Hale house standing in the distance. “Hold on to me,” Derek breathes the words.

Stiles wraps his fingers around the hand under his and moves his head, just a little, so his lips can press against Derek’s palm, “I won’t ever let go.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always, any and all comments and/or criticisms are accepted and appreciated.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
